Matthews earns victory in Salt Lake City

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Rabobank's Michael Matthews put in a Herculean effort to win stage 3 of the Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah Thursday, spending most of the day in a five-rider breakaway that got absorbed on the slopes of the final climb and then hanging on to win the sprint from a lead group of 60 riders.

Christian Vande Velde's Garmin-Sharp squad closed down most of the gap to the breakaway on the valley floor leading up to the final climb to preserve his overall lead.

Matthews said his team had left his usual sprint lead-out riders at home because of the hilly nature of the race, so the 2010 U23 world road race champion had to freelance his way to the win after clawing his way to the front on the downhill run into the finish.

"I tried to follow [Team Exergy's] Freddie Rodriguez because I heard he's a pretty good sprinter," Matthews said. "So I followed him for a bit and then it got a bit messy. A couple of guys came underneath on the last corner with about 800 [meters] to go. I lost a couple positions there, but [UnitedHealthcare's] Rory Sutherland started moving up with 300 to go, so I just followed him and started my sprint at 250 meters. I had to go around the long way, but luckily I still had the legs for the finish."

Starting in Ogden and finishing in Salt Lake City, the 138 km course featured 2,174 meters of climbing. Riders tackled the category 2 climb up North Ogden Pass again, along with another ascent of Trappers Loop and a final climb up Big Mountain, which reached nearly 2,300 meters of elevation. They faced another small bump at 123 km before the final 15 km downhill run into the finish at the University of Utah Research Park. The stage offered three intermediate sprints and three KOM spots, along with time bonuses of 10, six and four seconds for the top three finishers.

Matthews joined BMC's Johann Tschopp, RadioShack-Nissan's Thomas Rohregger, Liquigas-Cannondale's Timmy Duggan and UnitedHealthcare's Philip Deignan in a breakaway that rolled away from the field after the descent off the opening climb up North Ogden Pass. Duggan said forming the breakaway was relatively easy because the escapees were in the right place at the right time.

"A lot of times the breakaway starts and it's more of a tactical thing than anything, it's not necessarily a legs thing," Duggan said. "Michael and I were both there at the bottom of the descent, and it didn't take a genius to know that that's when the breakaway was going to go while Garmin was kind of regrouping their team to set up shop. So we just kind of rolled through and kept the momentum going and got a little group going without much effort."

The five riders built an ultimate lead of more than four minutes at the bottom of the penultimate climb, and with Tschopp starting the day 58 seconds down on the overall lead and Duggan at 1:31, the two breakaway riders were sitting first and second overall on the road. Garmin-Sharp's Peter Stetina said the situation caught the team a little off-guard and made for a really fast, really hard day.

"We knew Tschopp and Timmy Duggan were the best [placed] guys in the move, and we didn't want to let them get more than three minutes so that it would come back on the final climb naturally," Stetina said. "But then all of the sudden it was ballooning out to four, four and a half minutes, and we started to panic."

Garmin's "panic" turned into a serious chase through the flat lands leading up to the final climb, and the team pulled the escapees back in steady increments until the advantage of the lead group, which started to splinter on the climb up Big Mountain, was down to just over a minute as they hit the ascent. Garmin team director Charlie Wegelius heaped praise on his riders' efforts to nullify the gap, giving sprint specialist Tyler Farrar an extra nod for his effort the day before a possible sprint stage.

"The work that they did in the valley there before the climb was exceptional," Wegelius said. "To see a rider like Tyler Farrar, who could potentially go sprinting tomorrow, and what he did to himself to take the gap back, that's a sign of a good team."

With the field closing in, Tschopp attacked the break and dropped his former companions, who faded back into the field one by one until the BMC rider was the lone escapee in front of hard-charging and highly motivated chase. But Tschopp's daylong adventure was soon over, and the rest of the teams started looking for a stage win. Duggan had stuck with the field and headed to the front with several teammates to drive the pace in hopes of setting up teammate Damiano Caruso, who finished second on stage 1, for a possible win. Meanwhile, the Garmin riders who were still in the front group faded back into the bunch after their work to secure Vande Velde's overall lead was complete.

"It was all together, we didn't have a sprinter with us and we were pretty much spent," said Garmin's Dave Zabriskie. "So we needed to save ourselves for the rest for week."

Liquigas eventually ran out of riders to push the pace, so BMC, which had a relatively easy day in the peloton because of Tschopp's adventure, took control over the final handful of kilometers. The team managed to place Michael Schar in second and Brent Bookwalter in third, but Matthews squeaked by the two BMC teammates for the win.

Matthews said his team had targeted stage 3 and Friday's stage 4 before the Tour of Utah started, so he was pleased to be able to pull off the win on a day that favored sprinters who could also climb.

"We only came to the Tour of Utah for today's stage and tomorrow's stage, really," he said. "The rest is just training. So today was just sort of trying to survive to the finish because it was a shorter stage. I can climb okay, but not if they go really fast up the mountain climbs, so today was just to survive and see what I had left at the finish if I was still there."

Matthews also earned the sprint jersey with his stage win, while Duggan rode to the top of the mountains classification. Tschopp's day off the front earned him the jersey for most aggressive rider. Rabobank's Wilco Kelderman held onto the jersey for best young rider, while UnitedHealthcare's Jeff Louder remained atop the best Utah rider competition.

The race continues Friday with a relatively flat 220 km "sprinter stage" from Lehi to Salt Lake City that features 1,285 meters of climbing.

Race Notes: Three riders were disqualified during Thursday's stage for hanging onto caravan vehicles for an extended period after the first climb and descent. Rabobank's Tom Jelte Slagter was kicked out of the race, and one of his team's two cars will also be excluded from the caravan for the rest of the tour. Team Argos-Shimano's Jonas Ahlstrand received the same penalty, and his team will also have one car excluded. Omega Pharma-Quickstep's Matt Brammeier was disqualified for hanging onto a vehicle that was not his team car.

The TV helicopter that was filming the race also came under fire, as several Garmin-Sharp riders complained vociferously that the aircraft was getting too close to the peloton and that its rotor wash was creating a head wind that slowed the chase down as much as 5 kph at times.

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